My water bath ALWAYS leaks!

I always use a water bath for cheesecakes in my spring form pan and I follow the standard directions: wrap well with foil, pour hot water into large surrounding pan after placing on oven rack. No matter how well I wrap the pan and how careful I am with the pouring a small amount of water seeps in and my crust is soggy. What am I doing wrong? Is there some nuance to the art of the water bath that is completely escaping me?

Buy a roll of heavy duty foil - the wide industrial-size kind. Be very careful wrapping the springform pan, so as not to pierce the foil. Make sure it comes high enough up the sides that water doesn't splash over the edge and down toward the base. I don't think there's anything more finicky than that about a water bath. It's all about being obsessively careful in preparing the pan.

Use a regular heavy-duty cake pan with high sides, make sure you grease it really well...I mean REALLY well. You can put a parchment circle in the bottom and grease that too. Prepare your crust, but only put it on the bottom, not the sides of the pan. Bake in waterbath as usual.

Let cool completely overnight in the pan. When ready to unmold, run a knife along the edge, then dip in hot water for just a few seconds. Invert onto a plate, and whack it a few good times all around. It should come out if you've greased your pan really well. Invert again onto another plate. Press crumbs onto side if you want to make it look like a crust, or serve as is.

You can place the dry cake pan into a larger pan, fill with hot water to the correct level, THEN remove , fill, and wrap the cake pan. NOW place it in the water bath pan which is already on the oven shelf. Push shelf carefully into the oven.After baking, use an baster to carefully remove some water so it won't slosh onto the cake when removing from water bath.

Water baths are a PITA, but so worth it. I made a bread pudding this a.m., heavy on the custard, using a water bath. The difference in texture is amazing. The custard was like a fragile creme brulee and the bread pieces were light and soft. I always use a water bath when dealing with an egg-rich pudding or cheesecake.

I don't like baking cheesecakes in a spring-form pan as the preparation required is annoying. I bake all my cheesecakes in the high-sided aluminum Wilton cake pans or similar. The bottom of the pans do have to be lined with parchment that is cut to fit, but you never have to worry about a leaker.

Cool the cheesecakes at least 6 hours, and then place is a shallow bowl/sink of hot water for 1 minute to liquefy any butter that got under the parchment. I carefully run a parking knife around the side, and flip over on a cake round.

If I don't have wide foil on hand, or even sometimes with it, depending on which pan I use, I join two pieces together by folding one edge of each piece (about a one inch fold), joining those together so one edge is under the other, then make a few more folds, and it's watertight.